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Indepth Arts News:
"Pipilotto Rist: Solo Video and Installation Works"
2001-08-16 until 2001-11-18
Centraal Museum
Utrecht, ,
NL
An exhibition of video works and installations by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962,
Rheintal) opens on 16 August at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht. Pipilotti Rist has gained
international fame in recent years through her participation in the Venice Biennale (1993 and
1997) and solo exhibitions in Berlin (Museum fUr Gegenwartskunst, 1998), Vienna
(Kunsthalle, 1998), Zurich (Kunsthalle, 1999) and Paris (Musee dArt Moderne de la Ville de
Paris, 1999). Her installation Extremities, Soft, Soft (1999) was shown at the reopening of the
Centraal Museum in November 1999. The Centraal Museum asked Rist to design a spatial
installation specially for the museum and invited her to visit and get to know the rooms and
collections.
From that visit a plan was born for a new spatial installation in the museum chapel,
in addition to a presentation of various single projection video works in the project rooms.
Pipilotti Rist has appeared in around 150 group exhibitions and 30 solo presentations.
In the Netherlands her work was shown at the Wild Walls exhibition in Amsterdams Stedelijk
Museum (1995), at the Panorama 2000 open air exhibition in Utrecht (Centraal Museum,
1999) and in solo presentations in Sittard (Stedelijk Museum het Domeijn, 1997) and
Middelburg (Vleeshal, 2000). In the 1980s Pipilotti Ristattended the Schule fUr Design in
Basel, where she followed audiovisual classes under Rene Pulver, who specifically focused
on video as an artistic medium. Pulver provided his pupils with a wealth of information, thanks
to the extensive video archive he had built up, from Bruce Nauman to Ulrike Rosenbach and
others.
Rists first videos reveal how influential this background was. She experimented with
the possibilities of the medium, like a painter trying out various artistic materials. In a video like
Im Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986) Rist painted, as it were, with the video camera by
distorting images in various ways, by slowing down, stopping and accelerating the images, by
using double takes and including distorted andunfocused images. In this early work Rist
already showed an interest in the other element inherent to video: namely sound. In her
unique rendition of the Beatles song Not A Girl Who Misses Much, for example. Some of her
video works resemble video clips, like You Called Me Jacky (1990), the song being pregnant
with meaning, encompassing the images like a blanket. In You Called Me Jacky Rist mimes to
a Kevin Coyne song, interspersing the images with shots of a desolate train journey. Rist is
fascinated by the role of performer - whether its singer, artist or actor. And as the singer of a
female band Les Reines Prochaines its a role shes had direct experience of. In her work, Pipilotti Rist combines music she herself composes (with Anders
Guggisberg) and performs with the flowing, more or less abstract idiom of video imagery. Her
pictorial language has developed through her experiments in form with the medium into a
unique signature. The camera acts like a sensory eye touching and testing surroundings and
objects, like bodies. With a flowing motion the camera moves constantly from near to far, from
vague to sharp; like on a gentle slope, harmonising with the melodious line of the music.
Pipilotti Rist has created a visual image which is unique and recognisably female; with a sense
of fascination she tests and examines the world, almost erotically, like a huge, never-ending
body.
Femininity is a conscious part in Rists art. An explicit work is the video installation
Ever is Over All (1997), which was exhibited as a single projection at Panorama 2000. As she
skips down the road, an attractive woman smashes car windows with a phallic flower stem. A
passing police officer moves in, but nods in friendly acquiescence - shes a policewoman. This
humorous work illustrates the new phase that feminism has entered in visual art: it is no longer
superimposed message, it is entirely incorporated into the composition. Pipilotti Rists
significance lies in her ability to make this female perspective seem entirely natural to the
viewer.
Pipilotti Rists work is on view in project rooms 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 as well as in the
Chapel. The Centraal Museum regularly invites artists, designers and fashion designers to
personally furnish the museums several project rooms with their own work. These rooms are
located at various points in the museum and each has its own character. Pipilotti Rists plans
for the Central Museums Chapel are at present still a mystery. The atmosphere in this part of
what was once the medieval St Agnes Convent made a profound impression on her and it
seems that the Chapel, instead of becoming a location for the installation, will actually be the
subject of the installation.
For the exhibition at the Centraal Museum Pipilotti Rist has arranged for her entire
team to be in Utrecht for the first two weeks of August. Her work has been discussed and
analysed in numerous publications. She is the focus of Parkett, which appeared in 1996, and
Himalaya in 1999 (available in the Centraal Museum bookshop) and in 2001 Phaidon have
published a volume about Pipilotti Rist. The exhibition is accompanied by a volume in the
Centraal Museum Agnieten series about her work in the museum.
More video art is on show at the Centraal Museum from 3 to 7 October at the Impakt
Festival.
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